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In these days of high anxiety, there’s a phobia for just about everything. Consider, for example, “epistemophobia,” the fear of knowledge.

Now you might be wondering about who could possibly fear knowledge, given that a lack of knowledge is invariably fatal. So I’ll tell you who’s afraid of knowledge: Your elected representatives, that’s who. We have seen successive governments shy away, not merely from repealing damaging laws that criminalize possession of and trade in marijuana, but from learning anything about the effect of such drugs or such laws.

Indeed, when cannabis possession was first criminalized in Canada in 1923, few if any parliamentarians had ever heard of the drug, let alone knew anything about it. That didn’t stop them from criminalizing it, though, thereby starting us on a 90-year odyssey of ignorance, and one that has been anything but blissful.

The first few decades of the odyssey were relatively uneventful, given that marijuana was uncommon and virtually unknown in North America. But things changed in 1971 when, in an effort to distract Americans from the debacle of Vietnam, former U.S. president Richard Nixon declared war on drugs.

Cannabis was therefore placed squarely in the sights of law enforcement, despite there being little evidence of its effects or of the effect of laws prohibiting possession of such substances.

The Canadian government soon followed suit, again with little evidence in support of its policy. And with each successive decade, politicians in both Canada and the U.S. enacted ever harsher drug laws, while somehow remaining ignorant of the steady flow of information about the harms such laws occasion.

Indeed, shortly after war was declared, the Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs, chaired by future Supreme Court of Canada justice Gerald Le Dain, released a report calling for the repeal of laws criminalizing cannabis possession. And a minority report of the commission recommended legal trade in marijuana.

Hearings by the Le Dain Commission began in 1969, even before war was declared. And the commission released its report — one of the most comprehensive and well-respected reports on illicit drugs ever produced — in 1972, yet politicians apparently didn’t see or hear a thing about it.

Thirty years later, the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs followed up with another comprehensive report, a 600-plus page broadside against prohibition. The report, two-years in the making, recommended not just decriminalization, but legalization of cannabis possession. Yet it, too, fell on deaf ears, as few politicians apparently even bothered to read it, while fewer still heeded its recommendations.

And so we come to the present day and our present location. In an effort to determine the effects — both positive and negative — of legal trade in marijuana, Stop the Violence BC, a group of law enforcement officials, legal experts, public health officials and academic experts, has proposed the development of a research trial to evaluate the impact of cannabis regulation.

The study would involve one pilot site where marijuana is sold legally. Although the trial has not yet been designed, Stop the Violence BC co-founder and University of British Columbia medical professor Evan Wood notes that it could take a form similar to some of the studies of clients of Insite, Vancouver’s supervised injection site.

For example, customers of the legal marijuana site could be surveyed to determine if using the site has resulted in their no longer relying on organized crime for their marijuana. This could benefit the community in two ways — by adversely affecting organized crime’s bottom line, and by reducing or eliminating the proliferation of dangerous grow ops.

Profits from the site could help determine what kind of revenue legal trade in marijuana could provide, and researchers could assess whether the site has affected the ease with which children can access marijuana. Finally, the trial would be subject to ethical approval and could be shut down if it results in any unanticipated harms.

Researchers would also need to receive from the federal minister of health an exemption under s. 56 the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act since the trial would involve distribution of otherwise illegal substances. And while the federal government hasn’t been entirely supportive of innovative drug programs, it has provided s. 56 exemptions for trials involving prescribing heroin to treat opioid addiction and MDMA (ecstasy) to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Supporting such a trial seems a no-brainer, since we don’t know exactly what legalization would bring.

As a result, proponents and opponents of regulation have been arguing in an empirical vacuum, with proponents claiming it will eliminate a major source of revenue for organized crime while adding a major source of revenue for government, and opponents claiming it will lead to higher usage rates, including among children.

The only way to determine which, if either, of these scenarios is likely to come true is to conduct research like the proposed trial. Perhaps that’s why British Columbians are so strongly in favour of the proposal.

According to an Angus Reid Public Opinion survey, 73 per cent of respondents said they supported the trial while only 18 per cent opposed it. Furthermore, 44 per cent of respondents said their opinion of a political party would improve if the party supported the trial while only 12 per cent said their view of the party would worsen.

Ah, but there’s those see-no-evil-(or-good), hear-no-evil-(or-good) politicians again. To canvass political support for the trial, Stop the Violence BC sent the following question to the provincial Liberals, NDP, Conservatives and the Greens:

“If your party forms government, would you prevent a small-scale research trial involving an s. 56 exemption and examining if a strictly regulated (i.e. legal) system for adult marijuana purchases could cut profits to organized crime, raise tax revenue and better protect young people from the free availability of marijuana that exists under prohibition?”

The Green Party of B.C. was the only party to express unequivocal support for the trial, though the NDP did say that it would not prevent the trial. The Conservatives, on the other hand, offer no answer at all.

And then there are the Liberals, who offered this gem of skulduggery: “(T)he federal government is responsible for regulating marijuana and any changes to the current structure, including research trials, would have to be initiated by them.” Now this is patently false. The federal government is responsible for granting the s. 56 exemption, but nothing more, as the trial could be and would be (under this proposal) initiated provincially.

As if that weren’t enough, the Libs continued by saying that if the feds granted the exemption: “our government would certainly give serious consideration to any provincial approvals that would then be required.” So even if the feds are on board, the Liberals would still equivocate in their support. On the bright side, two of four provincial parties canvassed support expanding our knowledge of the effects of drug prohibition. But equally, two of four surveyed provincial parties seem less than supportive of an effort to increase our knowledge of one of the most important social issues of our time, an issue that has cost the world trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives.

Maintaining a posture designed to avoid seeing and hearing evil is one thing. But when it comes to drug prohibition, the provincial Liberals and Conservatives have apparently decided to adopt a posture facing backwards, so they can’t see or hear anything.

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